


ten things you know about the crash

by oh_gd



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Drug Addiction, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 03:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13849368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_gd/pseuds/oh_gd
Summary: An addendum to the season 2 finale/season 3 premiere.





	ten things you know about the crash

**Author's Note:**

> Written September 2014.

1\. It was caused by faulty air traffic control, which is to say it was caused by professionals fucking up their jobs so catastrophically as to kill a hundred people. It happens. You know this. You know, now, that friends can be gunned down over turf disputes - bloodstains on the asphalt a final territorial stake. The bad guys drive away and you unplug your fingers from your ears. Work casualties. It happens.

2\. It was caused by faulty air traffic control, which is to say it was caused by a man working a screen, a keyboard, a headset, his own two hands. Maybe he was distracted. Maybe he was bad at his job. He was only one man, and if steering massive, airborne machinery through miles of blue space while sitting in a distant room isn't playing God, then what is?

3\. A 737 is not as big as a 747. Really, it could have been worse. Debris rained down on the city and yet no one on the ground was killed. What a miracle - not to be struck dead by falling airline seats, by wayward body parts.

4\. You were far away from the city - from the crash site - when it happened. You were busy getting the toxins out of your bloodstream - sweating in the sauna, blowing a river of cigarette smoke out your mouth - you were busy, far away, otherwise occupied, taking care of yourself. Taking the speeches and the group therapy like a medicine, taking the medicine like a stern speech from a father. The group leader asked you to participate so you asked him if he'd ever ruined someone.

5\. It was caused by faulty air traffic control, which is to say it was caused by a man - although one man might as well be a hundred when you think about every role he plays in the world, every time he's ever had to be the hero to someone else's villain, and vice versa. Maybe he was a guitarist, or a small business owner, or great in bed, or a junkie. Or the father of a junkie. Maybe he'd spent the last decade holding his daughter's hand in hospital beds and waiting rooms and NA meetings, the daughter whose ghost was so bright in her father's eyes and so loud in her father's ears he couldn't pay attention to something as trivial as a screen, a keyboard, a headset, his own two hands.

6\. The group leader asked you to participate so you asked if he'd ever ruined someone and he told you he killed his daughter. Backed up on her in his pickup truck, drunk and tweaking. She was six. You said nothing. You needed a silence. A hundred miles away, above a major city, two planes collided midair.

7\. You watched 9/11 on TV when you were a kid, just like the rest of the world. You thought it looked like hell had materialized out the side of a building, just like the rest of the world. This time - quiet feet in slippers, long sleeves pulled down over the heels of your hands, a living room full of strangers, TV safe behind a plexiglass case - this time, it's different. There is no standing thing to watch topple - only a ball of fire, like a star, opening its mouth to the sky. It is like the photo of people jumping off the burning tower, but without the tower.

8\. It was caused by faulty air traffic control, which is to say it was not caused by you because you are not faulty air traffic control. That is what the cook tells you before you fall asleep on his living room sofa. You are only one man, and although one man may as well be a hundred, not a one of your many selves is at fault. Not the dealer in the parking lot or the skittish patient biting at his cuticles. Not the student failing chemistry. Not the son who is a disappointment or the brother who is a ghost and certainly not the boy who is in love with a girl, the girl with the wound for a mouth, the girl holding a coin like a secret and the boy's hand like a TV remote and the lighter like a plane against a spoon like another plane; the girl who stayed clean until she didn't, who told the truth until she didn't, who survived until she didn't, her vomit a puddle on his pillow, his sheets, the boy waking up to a girl who didn't wake up. No. Not even him, says the cook.

9\. You said nothing. Neither did the group leader or any of the other patients. You needed a silence - so you broke it. You asked him how could he not hate himself. And he said he did, actually, for a long time, but that guilt didn't get him anywhere. It only paralyzed him. He said you weren't there to fix yourselves, you were there to accept yourselves. A hundred miles away, a pink teddy bear fell into a swimming pool in a suburb just outside a major city. Half-burned. As if spat by God.

10\. Stories have bad guys. That's just how it is. Stories have bad guys, which is to say they have people who do things that get other people killed. It sounds simple because it is simple. You know this. The cook is so proud of you, gaunt and scrubbed on his living room sofa, explaining how you weren't there to fix yourself, you were there to accept yourself. And you did. You are one of the bad guys. You are the villain to someone else's hero. It doesn't matter you don't know who they are. It doesn't matter they might already be dead.


End file.
